Oak, Dwarf Chinquapin

Quercus prinoides is native to North America. The range may be expanded by planting. Its form is typically a suckering shrub or a small tree to 12 feet, but may reach 20 feet in the wild. It has an irregular crown. Looks like a chestnut oak or chinkapin oak. The DWARF CHINQUAPIN OAK is a shrubby, clone-forming oak native to central-eastern North America.

LEAF: The leaves are alternate, simple, deciduous, obovate, or oblong, large, coarse gland tipped teeth on margin, 2 to 6 inches long, dark, shiny green above, and much paler below.

FLOWER: The flowers are monoecious; male flowers are yellow-green long catkins to 2-1/2 inches long; females are green to reddish, very small in leaf axils, appearing with the leaves.

FRUIT: Acorn, a nut 1/2 to 3/4 inch long, broadest below the middle, has a thin bowl-shaped cap covering about 1/2 of acorn with a tattered fringe on the margin of the cap. Dark brown when mature.

TWIG: Slender to moderate, orange-brown, the buds cluster at branch tips, terminal buds 1/8 inch long, rounded, chestnut brown, individual scales with frosted edges.

BARK: Thin, light gray, rough, and flaky.

Like all white oaks, Q. prinoides has sweet-tasting green acorns that mature in a single growing season and germinate as soon as they fall to the ground with no winter dormancy. It freely hybridizes with any other species in the white oak group. Flowering and seed production begins at 3–4 years old.